cliché is a good word for his latest album. admittedly, i was intrigued by
the cover art, mistakenly thinking that van helden might have something to
say about the situation with too many african youths (the upheavals in
zimbabwe??? where is that photo lifted from? no credits). but it's just
an image to grab the viewer. might as well be a benetton add. even the
fonts are cliché. you need a cereal box decoder to read the tracklist.
retch.
especially irritating is that van helden fronts like he's trying to take
house to a higher ground by focusing on his hiphop credentials, dissing
capitalism/escapism and worshipping individualism? like he had some kind of
epiphany about "bringing man to a higher level"??! stringing together a
series of non-sequitors that sound thoughtful but are really just the same
old tired shit. van helden's been taking lessons from volkswagon
commercials, the x-files, and trendy fruitopia drinks.
"before there was even any thought of being capitalist, you know what i'm
saying. it's like you going to back, to like, the jungles in the amazon and
you find a tribe alive right now and they don't know nothing about what's
out there today. they just know that they live and they happy and they have
their existence. that's the type of shit i'm talking about right there,
like the fullness of, that whole spiritualness of what they are as that
tribe and how they live and and survive through that whole pure essence of
spirituality. you know what i'm saying?"
yeah, i know what he's saying. he's saying that he doesn't know shit about
the world except how to exploit a mythical fantasy and exoticize his vanity
in the process. the amazonian tribes are getting fucked over left and
right, by eachother, by mineral and oil speculators, by government sponsored
settlers and by cocaine traffickers. they don't eat pure essence of
spirituality, they eat food. they want pots and pans. they want
electronics. they want money (dollars, reals, pesos, you name it). in
other words, they're extremely aware of the global capitalist system.
and to think urb is doing it's job by sucking up to this ignorant hypocrite?
a real journalist brings critical intelligence to bear on the situation.
van helden, more than anyone else, deserves some rhetorical leveling but urb
just rolls over and passes the primmed hype along like a standard industry
ho.
and btw, the music is wack too. what's the big deal about looping numan's
cars? pete rock and cl smooth already did it 15 years ago.
paz,
adario
-----Original Message-----
From: markeg [mailto:markeg@virginconnect.com]
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2000 1:51 AM
To: acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
Subject: URB cd
dear aj list:What is on the current cd given away with subscriber copies
of URb this month? Btw : Armand van helden goes on about how he loves
hip hop more than house. well why dont he makes some aside from AV8 records?
im tired of people linking themselves to hip hop to seem authentic.
Its as much a cliche as the black diva who reslly wants to do r and b but
is doing house. dance music is its own thing Love it s itself. stop
apologizing for it!.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 02 2000 - 20:18:28 MET DST